Trump Gushes Over North Korea

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June 12, 2018

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CreditCreditIllustration by Oliver Munday; Photos by Doug Mills/The New York Times

After months of venomous barbs and apocalyptic threats of war, the meeting between President Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, was unquestionably a relief, with its handshakes and effusive politeness.

Mr. Trump deserves credit for setting in motion a process that for the time being will keep the two adversaries talking to each other. But the statement he signed with Mr. Kim was strikingly spare, with little evidence of any substantial progress despite Mr. Trump’s claim that it was “comprehensive.”

For now, all we know is that Mr. Trump has made major concessions, while Mr. Kim made fewer commitments than North Korea has made to past administrations and merely reaffirmed a goal of “denuclearization” that North Korea first announced in 1992. For his part, Mr. Trump announced he would provide North Korea with security guarantees and suspend joint military exercises with South Korea. As he gushed about the virtues of the North Korean dictator, just a day after he savaged some of America’s closest democratic allies, he even endorsed the North Korean view of such joint exercises as “provocative.”

Yes, the meeting deserves to be described as historic, and the president clearly reveled in the political theater of doing something none of his predecessors did — meeting a North Korean leader and proclaiming a new era between two countries that have been enemies since the Korean War. He also delighted in once again presenting himself as a deal maker: tackling one of the world’s most intractable security challenges, the threat of North Korea’s arsenal of up to 60 nuclear weapons and the missiles on which to deliver them.

The results of this first meeting fell short of both Mr. Trump’s own criteria for a baseline agreement with North Korea and of commitments the North has made in previous agreements with previous administrations.

In the statement, which ran little more than one page, the two leaders aimed to build a “lasting and robust peace” on the Korean Peninsula. The security guarantees that Mr. Trump promised to provide North Korea are in response to a longstanding demand from a regime that fears an American invasion, while Mr. Kim reaffirmed his “firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

The term “security guarantees” was not explained, but in providing them to allies like South Korea and Japan, the United States has committed to use military force to come to their defense. It seems highly unlikely that would apply in the case of North Korea, and it shouldn’t.

Mr. Trump later told a news conference that he still hoped at some point to withdraw the 28,500 American troops from South Korea. He said he intended to halt American war games held routinely with South Korea because they are “expensive” and “provocative.”

But it seems that he failed to forewarn both the Pentagon and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, a grievous mistake, especially with an ally who is directly affected by the decision and played a central role in causing the Kim-Trump meeting to happen. While Mr. Moon hailed the meeting’s outcome in general, stunned South Korean officials worried that Mr. Trump was making concessions too fast. The South Korean Defense Ministry said it was seeking to clarify the president’s intentions.

In past arms agreements, American governments have routinely insisted that international inspectors be able to rigorously verify compliance. That was certainly the case with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which imposed unprecedented 24/7 monitoring on Iran’s activities and which Mr. Trump has reneged upon.

The joint statement with North Korea lacked Mr. Trump’s previous mantra-like demand that denuclearization not just be complete but also be verifiable and irreversible. It also contained no definition of “denuclearization,” which the United States and North Korea interpret differently.

More specific and powerful language can be found in a now-defunct 2005 agreement in which North Korea “committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning, at an early date, to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons” and to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Even that language was called weak at the time by many Republicans, and in any case, the North Koreans did not abide by it.

Mr. Trump criticized the Iran nuclear deal for addressing only the nuclear threat and ignoring ballistic missiles, Iran’s regional role and human rights abuses. But the North Korea statement ignored similar non-nuclear issues, a startling omission given the North Korean regime’s brutality toward its people, development of ballistic missiles that can hit the United States and history of arms trafficking. The statement also omitted any specific reference to a possible peace treaty ending the Korean War.

During an hourlong news conference in which Mr. Trump was unusually friendly toward the reporters he regularly scorns, he dismissed concerns about vagueness and expressed a surprising confidence that despite past North Korean failings, Mr. Kim would meet his commitments.

Mr. Kim’s wins were obvious. He got what his father and grandfather never did — a meeting with an American president, the legitimacy of being treated as an equal as a nuclear power on the world stage, country flags standing side by side. And while American sanctions remain in place, Mr. Trump has delayed imposing new ones and other countries are expected to begin easing theirs.

Mr. Trump insisted he secured concessions from Mr. Kim, including a nuclear and missile test suspension that is already in its seventh month, and the destruction of a missile test site and an engine test site. The latter two will have to be independently verified. But what about the main goal, denuclearization? “We’re starting that process very quickly — very, very quickly — absolutely,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump now fully owns this issue and seems seized with the need to resolve it peacefully. That is to the good. It will now be the difficult work of his negotiators, led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to reach a carefully drawn, detailed agreement on the questions that truly matter, including the timing and scope of denuclearization and the future of the missile program.